Page 25 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘For a man who’s so disturbed, it’s astonishing how well he keeps on top of his flat, don’t you think? Everything is clean and tidy, suggesting someone who’s still got a hold on reality.’
‘This outward obsession with order can also be an unconscious counter-mechanism.’
I burst out laughing. ‘What are you now, a fricking psychologist?’
‘Yes, Ann, that’s exactly what I am!’ Incensed, she slams the palm of her hand on the wheel, catching the horn. ‘I spent eleven fricking semesters studying psychology! I did my fricking master’s, and for the past few months, I’ve been working in the fricking psychological counselling centre for victims of crime and their relatives at Frankfurt University Hospital! I know people like Rainer Meller! I work with them on a daily basis! They look for their own ways to deal with the pain and feelings of guilt, and do you know what? Sometimes these ways lead them straight into the psychiatric clinic.’
I’m silenced. I stare at her, stunned. And somehow time stands still. It’s as if Eva had punched me in the face without warning. This pale, thin girl with the chewed fingernails is apparently an expert, way ahead of me, still floundering in my fourth semester. In her analysis of the situation, in her knowledge– which with a CV like hers must be well-grounded– in everything, in fact. I feel small and betrayed once more. Time is moving again, trickling away in an embarrassing silence.
‘Let’s not argue,’ Eva says eventually, her tone gentle. Then she gives a start and a curt scream. I flinch too. Rainer Meller is standing by the passenger door, peering in at us.
‘Everything all right?’ he asks, his voice muffled by the closed window.
We nod in sync.
‘Let’s be off, then!’ he says impatiently. ‘What are we still waiting for?’
Marcus Steinhausen is a gaunt type. Very different from the photos in Meller’s sitting room, in which he looks healthy and well groomed. He has greasy, ash-blond hair that hangs in thin strands down to his chin. Hollow cheeks, pimply skin. Most striking of all are those dark, almost black, penetrating eyes. He’s living back in the house in Lichtenberg he used to share with his mother. She’s not there; she must be in a care home or dead. He doesn’t seem happy to see us or Meller at his door, but he lets us in all the same. Eva and me, at least. He tells our escort, who’s almost beaten him to death twice, to get lost. Meller’s about to make a fuss, but Eva manages to calm him down. Of course she does, she’s a psychologist, after all, and knows how to deal with relatives who are practically mad with rage and pain.
Now the two of us are in the sitting room, on armchairs upholstered in reddish-brown velvet, with crocheted cushions as headrests. More cushions on the tiled coffee table. The air is dusty and stale; it smells of an inability to shake off the past in the wake of a serious problem. Although his mother is no longer around, it seems as if Steinhausen doesn’t dare change even the smallest thing here. We hear him clattering crockery in the kitchen. After inviting us to take a seat, he said he was going to make coffee. Heavy, ruched curtains with a flowery pattern hang in front of the windows. They could be grey, beige or merely yellowed; it’s impossible to tell because they’re drawn and make the room so dark that, without the light from an ornate brass lamp on a small table, we wouldn’t be able to see anything at all. After my eyes have become accustomed to the dimness, I allow my gaze to wander. It alights on a piano. I imagine Steinhausen taking lessons as a child, and his mother rapping him on the knuckles whenever he played a wrong note while practising. On top of the piano are photographs.
‘Ann,’ Eva hisses when I get up to take a closer look. ‘Don’t! He’ll be back in a sec and think we’re snooping around!’ But that’s exactly what we’re doing, that’s why we’re here– so I ignore her warning.
The photos.
Two toddlers, on either side of their mother, holding her hand. One is Marcus Steinhausen, the other must be his brother. Michelle was right: they really do look similar. It’s winter; they’re wearing thick clothes and staring into the camera with serious, deadpan faces. The next photo is of the mother sitting stiffly in one of the armchairs, the headrest framing her head like a halo. Marcus and his brother, now teenagers, are on the armrests, again wearing those serious, careworn expressions that look as if they’d never experienced the slightest moment of joy or happiness. Another portrait of Frau Steinhausen on her own, sepia-toned and as if from a different time. And then another family photo, this time of the Mellers. Michelle and Larissa as I know them, but Rainer Meller’s face has Steinhausen’s stuck over it.
‘Oh Jesus!’ I splutter, and that’s all I say because the pattern repeats itself: the next photo is of Larissa in the arms of a man whose face has also been replaced by Marcus Steinhausen’s.
‘Get away from there!’ Eva sounds anxious. Without saying a word or turning around, I wave behind my back to get her to come over to the piano.
Now a photo of Larissa on her own. It looks like she’s on holiday; she’s wearing a bathing costume and holding an ice cream.
‘Eva, you’ve really got to—’
A cough. A cough and someone’s breath on the back of my neck. I recoil and spin around.
Right beside me is a grinning Steinhausen. ‘Well, Ann. Find what you were looking for?’
I instinctively throw my hands up in defence.
Resounding laughter rains down on me, big hailstones of cold, biting sounds. ‘You must know that old proverb? Curiosity killed the cat?’
I recoil again. ‘What?’
‘I asked if you knew the proverb.’ Eva glances to the side. ‘Curiosity killed the cat. It’s what my grandma always used to say.’ Feeling palpitations, I put a hand to my chest. No, we’re not in Marcus Steinhausen’s sitting room, we’re still following Rainer Meller’s Volvo. Although the journey did go via Lichtenberg, where Steinhausen used to live with his mother, we’re now more than twenty kilometres away, and with every kilometre, I realise the horrific vision I’ve just fallen into is only getting crazier.
‘All I’m saying,’ Eva continues– she hasn’t realised my imagination’s been playing games with me– ‘is that I’ve experienced this myself. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to dig too deeply. It can change your entire life.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘I thought you were a psychologist? Isn’t your entire profession all about digging as deep as you can?’
‘Yes, but afterwards it’s also our job to teach people how to deal with what they’ve found.’
‘Really, Eva, I don’t understand you. You stay up half the night with me, supposedly because you’re as keen as I am on finding out the truth. But the moment things get serious and we actually have a lead, you suddenly start getting obstructive. What’s that all about? What was yesterday for you? Just a game, like when we were kids and used to play detectives, following some mysterious animal tracks on the edge of the woods? Just a game to escape the boredom of your family dinner?’
Eva shakes her head and briefly takes a hand off the wheel to point at Meller’s Volvo, which right now is taking the turn to Henningsdorf. ‘We’re going too far here. God knows where he’s taking us.’
‘You can offer to give him therapy when you get the chance. But before that let’s see what he wants to show us.’
